No one knew a father better than his son. Early the next morning, Dad remembered how suspiciously He Chu San had acted the night before and really did come to try his bedroom door. He pushed it twice and found it locked. He was about to give up when he heard snores rising and falling from inside—unmistakably from two people!
What the hell?!
Dad started pounding on the door and shouting. He did not say he was looking for anyone, only that he needed to come in and get some stock. A long bout of rustling came from inside, and only after quite some time did a bleary-eyed He Chu San finally open the door, grumbling, “Dad, what is it? Didn’t you take out everything you needed yesterday?”
“I forgot the soft drinks, all right?” Dad replied casually. He squeezed past He Chu San into the room, looking around suspiciously and even checking behind the door.
“Dad, what are you looking for?” He Chu San asked with a yawn.
“The soft drinks.”
“They’re right beside your feet.”
“Oh.” Dad answered as though nothing were amiss. Having found nothing, he surveyed the room once more. Boxes of merchandise stood everywhere, leaving only a narrow path to the bed and window. It really did not look as though another person could be hiding there.
Still, the strange double set of snores and He Chu San’s furtive behavior just now were deeply suspicious.
Suddenly, realization dawned. Dad shoved aside He Chu San, whose excessively innocent expression only made him look guiltier, and bent down to check beneath the bed!
“Ah…” He Chu San’s mouth fell open.
Dad lifted the hanging bedsheet—only to find the entire space beneath the bed packed with boxes.
“Yaaawn…” He Chu San finished the yawn he had started. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going back to sleep.”
Dad began to doubt his own judgment and left in a huff, beginning the day’s work with complicated feelings. He Chu San carefully locked the door, then hopped on his bad leg to the window. “Brother Liu Yi, you can come out now.”
A moment later, Xia Liu Yi reluctantly clambered in through the window, spat out the necktie clenched between his teeth, and sat on the bed with a greenish face, saying nothing. He felt so aggrieved he nearly shed manly tears.
He was the mighty Dragon Head. Yet first thing in the morning, wearing nothing but a pair of underwear, he had been forced to cling outside the window of a tenement building and freeze in the wind like an adulterer caught sneaking around…
A moment earlier, he had nearly lost his temper and jumped back inside to explode at Dad—I took your son as my wife. So what?! Chop me up?! Bite me if you dare?!
—But the instant he imagined Dentist He holding that wildly spinning drill aloft and heard in his mind the hysterical buzzing it made inside his mouth, everything from his gums to the base of his spine immediately went weak…
Dentists—the enemies of all humanity. Boss Xia thought bitterly, One day I’m going to round up every dentist in Hong Kong and use them to fill in the sea!
“Brother Liu Yi, it’s still early. Sleep a little longer.” Shivering from the cold, He Chu San curled beneath the quilt beside him.
“Get away from me.” Boss Xia was still feeling deeply aggrieved.
He Chu San reached out a paw and tugged at the elastic waistband of Xia Liu Yi’s underwear. Xia Liu Yi let out a howl, spun around, and pounced on him. “You bastard! Didn’t you hear me tell you to get away?”
Pinned firmly beneath him and completely covered by his shadow, He Chu San laughed quietly and wrapped both arms around his neck.
Xia Liu Yi lifted the quilt and burrowed underneath. The two rolled around in the cramped bedding, biting and gnawing at each other, clawing at one another with their hands, laughing and tussling like little kids who had not even grown all their teeth yet. After a while, Xia Liu Yi finally pinned He Chu San beneath him again. He was smiling as he lowered his head to kiss the tip of He Chu San’s nose when his movements abruptly froze.
Something half-hard was pressing against his thigh…
The smile on He Chu San’s face froze too. They stared awkwardly at each other for several seconds before Xia Liu Yi rolled over and tried to get out from under the quilt. He Chu San swiftly wrapped his arms around his waist and dragged him back!
Xia Liu Yi struggled hard, but He Chu San clung to him tightly. Whenever Xia Liu Yi pried one arm away, the other immediately wrapped around him again, sticky as an octopus. Lust went straight to He Chu San’s head. He chased Xia Liu Yi’s mouth for urgent kisses while both hands slid lower and lower along his waist and back, into the cleft between his buttocks. In desperation, Xia Liu Yi slammed his forehead into He Chu San’s. The little punk let out a muffled grunt and finally let go.
Xia Liu Yi sprang off the bed in a single bound, retreated a large step, and glared at him while breathing hard.
Rubbing his aching forehead, He Chu San looked utterly baffled. “Brother Liu Yi?”
Xia Liu Yi raised a hand and wiped his mouth. He could not get a single word out; his face was livid. When He Chu San struggled upright and tried to get out of bed, Xia Liu Yi immediately took another step backward.
Realizing something was wrong, He Chu San asked, “What happened?”
“…”
“You don’t like doing that?”
“…”
“Brother Liu Yi?”
“I’m going home.”
When Dad came home at noon to look after his sickly son, he found He Chu San leaning against the living-room window on his crutches, staring blankly at the alley below, looking positively miserable. Dad called him several times, but He Chu San acted as though he had not heard a thing.
Amitabha Buddha. Jesus Christ. Dad decided his son had been possessed! Another day he would have to visit Wong Tai Sin Temple, pray, draw a fortune stick to ask about good or bad luck, and get a talisman to call He Chu San’s soul back!
He Chu San held his rice bowl without tasting a thing. He chewed a piece of old ginger as though it were chicken for quite a while before saying dazedly, “Dad, may I ask you something?”
“What is it? Ask anything!” Dad felt sorry for his son—although he also wanted to smack him awake with a chopstick.
“Mom has been gone for so many years. How did you manage by yourself?”
“What do you mean, how? I raised you. The dead are dead, but the living still have to live, don’t they?” Dad took a disdainful sip of his drink.
“I mean, how did you manage at night?”
Dad sprayed his drink all over the table.
…
For so bluntly probing the long and mysterious decades of his elder’s single life, He Chu San was beaten across the head with chopsticks by an embarrassed and furious Dad until his scalp was covered in bumps. Sporting a head like Shakyamuni Buddha, he grew even more melancholy. He took his crutches and went out alone, intending to wander around and clear his mind.
He walked aimlessly until, without realizing it, he found himself wandering into Kau Lung Walled City.
Since moving away with Dad the year before, he had never returned. The demolition work had now entered its final stage. The end of the previous month had been the deadline for the first group of residents to move out, and fewer than a third of the original inhabitants remained.
His crutches struck the greasy, filthy ground with slow, heavy knocks as he felt his way into the urban jungle where the sky could not be seen overhead. The rotten, fishy stench of dead rats by the roadside still smelled just as familiar. Faded shop signs hung crookedly on either side, their lettering blurred with age, and old light bulbs beneath the beams looked ready to fall. Many doors stood open, but no one remained inside; only piles of rotting rubbish and broken tables and stools that could not be taken away had been left behind. Every alley was deathly silent, with only his lonely footsteps echoing through them.
This black land had once swallowed his childhood, yet it had also nurtured the flower of hope in his heart. Before much longer, everything filthy, foul, sordid, and decayed—everything that represented an era built to hide dirt and shelter vice—would collapse beneath the roar of bulldozers and disappear into the dust of time.
He passed the alley where Xia Liu Yi’s men had once carried him off in a burlap sack, the long-abandoned “Hiu Kei Film Company,” Lung Tsun Charity School where they had once done morning exercises, and Hua’s Café. At last he reached his family’s dental clinic. He lifted a hand and gave the half-closed door a light push. It swung open, showering him with dust as he stepped inside and slowly climbed the stairs in darkness.
Inside his tiny room of less than five square meters, only a small stool split in two and the iron-framed bed where he had slept for twenty years remained. The bed had rusted badly; the lightest tap of his crutch sent rust and dust puffing down from it. Remembering how he and Dad had once pinned Xia Liu Yi onto that bed to pull his tooth, He Chu San could not help smiling.
Only two short years had passed. Who could have imagined that he and that violent, arrogant gangster would have come this far?
Still smiling, he looked around one final time, closed the door, and left the He family clinic. Instead of returning the way he had come, he continued farther ahead and entered Sat Tau Alley. Xia Liu Yi had said this was where he had lived as a child, and He Chu San wanted to see it for himself.
Sat Tau Alley was short enough to see from one end to the other. Because most of its former residents had been drug addicts and gamblers, the place had been chaotic, and He Chu San had almost never come this way. As he walked, he looked around, trying to guess by instinct which home had once belonged to Xia Liu Yi.
He failed to watch where he planted his crutch and brought it down on an empty glass bottle, nearly stumbling. He awkwardly caught himself against the wall and got a hand covered in dust. The bottle rolled away with a clatter and struck the half-open door of the home opposite.
“Cough, cough… Who is it?!” a hoarse voice called from inside.
Startled, He Chu San stepped backward. A thin, shriveled, hunchbacked old man came out with an old smoking pipe between his lips.
“I used to live nearby. I was passing through and came to look around,” He Chu San said.
The old man studied him suspiciously and turned to go back inside, but He Chu San stopped him. “Uncle, excuse me. Did a family surnamed Xia live here more than ten years ago? There were two children. One was named Xia Xiao Man, and the other was Xia Liu—Xia Hao.”
“Who remembers something from more than ten years ago?” the old man said impatiently. He took a puff from his pipe, then seemed to remember. “You mean Snake Boy Xia? He lived upstairs across the alley. He did have two children. They both disappeared later. That perverted bastard! Worse than an animal—he even abused his own children!”
He Chu San’s heart tightened. “How did he abuse them?”
“They’d scream and cry and beg for mercy in the middle of the night. How do you think?” The old man frowned as he remembered. “I remember one time, the boy ran out covered in blood. His trousers had been torn to shreds, and he left a trail of blood behind him as he ran. Snake Boy Xia had his head split open and came charging after him, waving a broken beer bottle and screaming like a ghost. He grabbed the boy by both legs and dragged him back upside down… I tried to stop him, and Snake Boy Xia stabbed me with the bottle!”
He lifted his clothes to reveal several old scars across his waist. After coughing a few times, he sighed again and again. “No one knows whether he later sold those two children or killed them and buried them. Better if they died. Better that way. Staying alive would’ve been nothing but fucking misery… Cough…”
He coughed for a while, took another puff, then looked up and saw the young man’s deathly pale face and the crutch trembling continuously in his hand. Suspicious, he asked, “What are you to that family? Snake Boy Xia has been dead for years. Why are you still looking for him?”
“How did he die?” He Chu San’s voice was low and hoarse, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
“They said he offended some gangsters. He was hacked to death while walking down the street, only a few days after his children disappeared… Cough, cough… Retribution. Retribution… Cough, cough, cough… Good that he died… Cough, cough, cough… People like us—who among us doesn’t deserve to die…? Cough…” The more agitated he became, the more violently he coughed. He clutched his chest and struggled for breath for quite a while before finally recovering. When he looked up again, the young man was gone.
…
When He Chu San returned home that evening, he no longer looked as distracted and lost as he had at noon. He silently finished dinner, retreated into his room, and made several telephone calls. Dad pressed his ear to the door to eavesdrop and discovered that his son was actually looking for another job.
“A’San, your injury hasn’t healed yet. Rest at home for a few more days,” Dad advised before bed.
“It’s all right, Dad,” He Chu San replied. “I’m almost recovered. Staying at home is stifling. I might as well go back to work.”
He contacted a former supervisor who had moved to another company and followed him into another firm in the same industry, beginning his new job while still using crutches. Xia Liu Yi had not contacted him once since that morning. He Chu San remained calm and waited patiently for more than a week before carrying a bag of ingredients over to Xia Liu Yi’s home on his crutches.
It was the weekend, and Xia Liu Yi had gone out on business. Security let He Chu San in, and with practiced familiarity he went straight to the kitchen and began busying himself with this and that. When Xia Liu Yi returned that evening carrying the chill of the outdoors, he came face-to-face with a coffee table covered in freshly baked cakes and cookies and froze.
“You’re back?” He Chu San poked his head out from the kitchen. “The soup will be ready soon.”
Uneasy and distracted, Xia Liu Yi sat on the sofa and silently finished an entire cigarette. Eventually, he could not resist reaching for a plate of chestnut cake.
“The flowers and plants I put outside all died.” He Chu San came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of chicken soup in one hand, smiling as though nothing had happened. “Didn’t you water them for me?”
Xia Liu Yi, who was eating his third slice of cake, paused. He swallowed the crumbs in his mouth and replied just as casually, “I watered them. They died.”
The corners of He Chu San’s mouth rose even higher. He set the chicken soup on the coffee table and sat beside him. “Did you water them too much?”
Xia Liu Yi did not pull away from the intimacy. After a moment of silence, he held out the chestnut cake he had taken one bite from. “This one’s good. Try it.”
He Chu San lowered his head and took a bite of the cake, accepting Boss Xia’s awkward, indirect peace offering. “So sweet.”
“Mm.”
“You like it this sweet? Should I make it this way next time?”
“Mm.”
“Have you eaten dinner? I left food for you in the pot.”
“I ate,” Xia Liu Yi said. After a pause, he added, “But I’m not full.”
He Chu San accompanied Xia Liu Yi through a second dinner. They chatted as usual about little everyday things, tacitly avoiding any mention of the time they had spent apart. When Xia Liu Yi heard that He Chu San had found a new job, his reaction was exactly the same as Dad’s. “Your injury hasn’t healed yet. Stay home and rest a while longer! Are you short of money or something?”
“I’m fine. Moving around more will help me recover faster,” He Chu San said. “Are you free tomorrow? Shall we go out and watch a movie?”
Xia Liu Yi thought for a while. “In the evening. I’ll send someone to pick you up from your office.”
“All right.”
The two of them dawdled over the meal until the night had grown late and He Chu San had no choice but to say goodbye and go home. Xia Liu Yi saw him to the door, his brow furrowing again and again before he finally asked, “When are you moving back?”
He Chu San looked rather gloomy at the question. “Dad won’t allow it. He said if I dare move out before I recover, he’ll break my leg.”
“Isn’t it already broken?” Xia Liu Yi scoffed.
“I still have another one.”
Xia Liu Yi watched him slowly limp down the steps. Beneath the moonlight, He Chu San’s departing figure looked thin and desolate, swaying from side to side with every step. Boss Xia’s tender little heart was sent swaying just as violently.
Come to think of it, they hadn’t seen each other for ten days. Add in the time Xia Liu Yi had spent in Thailand, and it had been almost a month.
“Hey, A’San.” Xia Liu Yi raised his voice and called him back.
He Chu San had already reached the stone path through the little courtyard. He stopped and turned around in confusion.
“That matter…” Xia Liu Yi said quietly. His expression was indistinct in the shadow beneath the eaves. Only after a long pause did he continue, “It’s not impossible. Give me some time.”
He Chu San froze. Suddenly understanding what Xia Liu Yi meant, his eyes flew wide. He heard the nervousness and hesitation in the other man’s voice, along with the greatest concession Xia Liu Yi could possibly make—and that concession made He Chu San’s heart ache as though it were splitting apart!
“No, Brother Liu Yi, it’s all right.” He shook his head frantically. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t mind—”
“Enough! Shut up!” The moment the words were out, Xia Liu Yi flushed red with embarrassed fury and cursed, “You don’t mind? Well, I damn well do! Hurry up and get the hell home!”
“…”
“What are you still standing there for? Get lost!”
“Remember to brush your teeth before bed.”
“Get lost, get lost, get lost!”
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